Re-organising My Fabric Stash

Whilst in the sewing room the other day, I decided to tackle the 'bottom drawer' in my chest of stationery and fabric.  It's by far the most troublesome drawer, as I can never get it to shut properly, on account of it being too full of various pieces of fabric.

Most of the fabrics are cotton, some being fabrics that are left over from previous quilting projects, some earmarked for future quilting projects, some I have no idea what they'll eventually be used for and some are oddments of synthetic fabrics that aren't going to be used for quilting, but I may find a use for at some point.

In the past I've arranged them in piles, usually according to colour, project or pattern i.e. spots, stripes, but the only problem with this is that I had to dig through each pile to find a suitable fabric each time I looked and they never got put back quite as tidily.  As a consequence, I decided to organise them completely differently and put them all in the drawer with an edge showing. With this method, I can see what is in the drawer at one glance on opening it and can grab any one fabric and take it out pretty easily, without disturbing the others too much.

Here's the finished tidy drawer. 

I was really pleased with the transformation.  I didn't take a before photo I'm afraid, but trust me it was a mess and just wasn't very practical.  The fabrics are still largely organised by project and colour and yes, there's still one small pile of fabrics in the corner, which are stacked on top of one another - these are the synthetics - but this is a vast improvement and will make life much easier and closing the drawer a wheeze.  I've even started to re-organise a couple of my fabric storage boxes in the same way, to make all my fabrics more accessible.  It's amazing how small changes can make a big difference and really oil the wheels.